Tag: climate change

Posted on by Tim Worstall

Where Michael Mann Goes Wrong About Climate Change

Michael Mann hasn’t grasped the simplest and most basic point about climate change yet:

Mann told the Observer that although flat rejection of global warming was becoming increasingly hard to maintain in the face of mounting evidence, this did not mean climate change deniers were giving up the fight.

“First of all, there is an attempt being made by them to deflect attention away from finding policy solutions to global warming towards promoting individual behaviour changes that affect people’s diets, travel choices and other personal behaviour,” said Mann.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Why Marty Weitzman Was Wrong About Climate Change’s Fat Tail

This comes into that – all too large – class of things I’d not want to have to explain myself but am willing to accept is being properly explained by another.

You know, on the basis that I don’t understand the method by which the point is being made, only the conclusion.

But, Marty Weitzman told us that there’s a fat tail to the probability of calamitous climate change. The implication of this being that we should and must do much more than we were thinking we had to.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Today’s Climate Change Argle Bargle

Over in Bioscience we’ve the latest insistence that we’ve all got to return to our wattle and daub huts and live, happily ever after, as medieval peasants.

More than 11,000 scientists around the world have declared a climate emergency, warning of “untold suffering” without urgent action.

The declaration is based on analysis of more than 40 years of publicly available data covering a range of measures from energy use to deforestation and carbon emissions.

Scientists from the University of Sydney, Australia, Oregon State University and Tufts University in the US and the University of Cape Town in South Africa are joined in the warning by 11,000 signatories from 153 countries including the UK.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Extinction Rebellion Should Shut Up And Go Home.

It’s time someone explained to St Greta and Extinction Rebellion that they are simply wrong about the world we inhabit. No, this is not an attempt to deny climate change. Nor to say that the science underlying it is all wet. I have my doubts about a lot of it, can point to gross errors in what is being said and how that scientific work is being done. Hell, I was once challenged by Michael Mann to do better science than was contained in a Jim Hansen paper, which I did and Mann went very quiet*.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Climate Change Scientists Say Spend More On Climate Scientists

This is one of those shocking events that we really never do see. A group of people arguing, in public, that we really should all be spending more on this group of people.

Sure, of course they dress it up in a little more reasoning than that. But that surface gloss doesn’t change the underlying demand – give us your money!

The Telegraph tries to have fun with it:

Academics have demanded career breaks so they can save the planet from climate change as they warn that “humanity is on a precipice”.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

The Club Of Rome Really Are Idiots, Aren’t They?

But then if all you’ve got is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. In their emergency report on the emergency that is emergency climate change they tell us that:

Ensure greater materials efficiency and circularity by 2025
• Substantially reduce the impact of basic materials,
e.g. steel, cement, aluminum and plastics, from a rate
of almost 20% of carbon emissions globally today, to
close to net zero.
• Promote innovation, material substitution, energy
efficiency, renewable energy supply and circular material
flows to more than halve GHG emissions.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

George Monbiot Discovers Opportunity Cost – It’s Not Going To Be Pretty, This

Now that the IPCC’s report is being misunderstood to mean that we’ll all have to survive on a diet of mung beans we would of course expect George Monbiot to weigh in. Which, obviously, he does. But in an interesting and for him what is going to be an uncomfortable manner. Because he raises the subject of opportunity costs:

The problem is that it concentrates on just one of the two ways of counting the carbon costs of farming.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

It Depends On The Definition Of Essential Internal Flights, Doesn’t It?

The latest little proposalette over what we should do about climate change:

Some solutions are simple: state intervention to nationalise the railways and further subsidise prices would be a start. Meanwhile, banning all non-essential domestic flights within England, Scotland and Wales is common sense thinking. Simply increasing taxes on air travel isn’t going far enough. Restricting flight numbers might initially sound drastic, but with 8% of global emissions coming from travel, and the sector set to grow at 4% per year internationally, there is no other choice.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

The Guardian Finds That Civilisation Emits Carbon Dioxide

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone at all. But it does seem to take the Guardian and such fellow travellers by surprise, every time:

Taking a long-haul flight generates more carbon emissions than the average person in dozens of countries around the world produces in a whole year, a new Guardian analysis has found. The figures highlight the disproportionate carbon footprint of those who can afford to fly, with even a short-haul return flight from London to Edinburgh contributing more CO2 than the mean annual emissions of a person in Uganda or Somalia.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

They Must Have Their Climate Change Numbers Wrong Here

There’s a report stating that pumping water up onto the Antarctic ice sheet would reduce the flooding of cities. Seems obvious enough really. The next stage though, not so obvious. And there’s got to be something wrong with their numbers here. Because they’re insisting that this is all ludicrously expensive and so we’d better just cut emissions instead.

At which point, well, really?

Spraying trillions of tons of snow over west Antarctica could halt the ice sheet’s collapse and save coastal cities across the world from sea level rise, according to a new study.

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